Genshin's Bond of Life Mechanic

[LilimoLimomo]

Seriously, the current bread & butter existence of a healer in Duty Finder is waiting for some other player to do something to themselves (e.g., failing a mechanic, whether intentionally or by accident) that you then get to do something about.

You're preaching to the choir.

Thus, other players being able to push a button and go, "hey, I could use some healing" is no different from the current state of things.

The important difference is that failing a mechanic is widely seen as "bad play", and is thus generally discouraged. Which means that in the case where a group is having trouble with content, one of the possible ways to improve is to not fail mechanics, which will lead to less incoming damage. But if that "incoming damage" is coming from a part of a player's optimized rotation, that's not seen as "bad play". And thus when the group is trying to get past a roadblock, it becomes more ambiguous whether or not a specific behavior should change, and thus the table has been set for conflict.

In my opinion, one of the reasons that Final Fantasy 14's community tends to be so great and overall experiences with other players tend to be so pleasant is because relative to many other MMO's, the game's mechanics are crafted and curated to mitigate the potential conflict. A class ability where I lose some life but gain a buff is packed with potential for this exact kind of conflict, the kind that is easily avoidable by simply not having this mechanic.

Which is why I don't think that adding the results of "bad play" to the formula for "optimal play" is a good idea: it's not a significant enough change to be an actual solution to the pervasive issue of healers being bored, but it is enough to cause problems and conflict for less skilled players and groups with different ideologies. No thank you.

[LilimoLimomo]

What makes it work well in Genshin is that characters that have a need to heal themselves are able to provide that healing they need. Which is why I used Warrior as an example. Healers just make those mechanics significantly easier and faster.

If I were to try to adapt this mechanic to Final Fantasy 14, I wouldn't make it affect healing since there's a specific role that has overall "responsibility" for that domain. Instead, I would keep the disadvantage side of the double-edged ability local to the player that used it; that way you've got a double-edged ability, but it doesn't directly impact other players, only the player who cast it.

So, for example, Warrior could have an ability that gives them 3 stacks of "Unrestrained", and while "Unrestrained" the Warrior does less damage. But every use of Fell Cleave removes a stack of "Unrestrained", and when the final stack of "Unrestrained" is removed the Warrior gets a more damage for a certain amount of time. This is just an off-the-cuff example, but hopefully this illustrates the basic way that I would adjust this kind of mechanic so that the disadvantage becomes localized to the player, as opposed to being a problem someone else on the team feels the need to step in and solve.

[ty_taurus]

A class ability where I lose some life but gain a buff is packed with potential for this exact kind of conflict

Well it's a good thing the main focal point of this discussion is not at all what you're describing. Phew, we dodged a bullet right there.

[AmiableApkallu]

But if that "incoming damage" is coming from a part of a player's optimized rotation, that's not seen as "bad play".

Healers already have to be prepared for that. It's called, "There is a tank in the party, and they are, heavens be willing, doing their job."

A class ability where I lose some life but gain a buff is packed with potential for this exact kind of conflict, the kind that is easily avoidable by simply not having this mechanic.

As a healer, there have been times where I have wished to myself, "I really hope this GNB uses Superbolide, because I'm running on fumes." Or at the other end of the spectrum, there have been times a GNB fat-fingered Superbolide, and as the healer, I was like, "I thought I had you, but this is fine, I got heals to spare."

The only potential for "conflict" is when you have a metard (that might be my new favorite term) who thinks healing is beneath them -- despite, you know, playing a healer. The rest of us are more than happy to actually push a heal when the situation calls for it.

[LilimoLimomo]

Well it's a good thing the main focal point of this discussion is not at all what you're describing. Phew, we dodged a bullet right there.

Apologies, it's very tedious to say "a reverse shield of negative healing that needs to be healed before you can really be healed". So I said "lose some life" to try to be less wordy since it's 90% the same idea, assuming that we'd all be on the same page as to what we're actually talking about. I shan't make such a mistake again.

[ForsakenRoe]

Just to chime in with my own experiences, WOW's had this as a concept since time immemorial. Blood DK's 'cheat death' Living Dead whatever, Purgatory, does this. you have a 'HP debt' of however much you were overkilled by, and if you aren't healed back out of debt within 4 seconds you die for real. That's been in the game since... MOP, apparently? They refer to that kind of mechanic, where your healing is absorbed by a 'debt' of sorts as a 'heal absorb', I'm pretty sure. Boss mechanics apply them too of course. And to my understanding, while shielding is a bit less common in WOW, the shield is also treated as an 'overcoat of HP', protecting the player's actual HP bar while the heal absorb is preventing healing from getting through. In this regard, heal absorbs/bonds of life are a mechanic that incentivizes Pure healers, rather than Barrier, due to their higher flat heal potencies. However, Barrier healers retain a valuable position/role, as their shielding will be a safety net to buy time for the Pure healer to pump that big healing

WHM in particular would enjoy this mechanic, given that Benediction would also instantly clear the Absorb/Bond, as well as putting the player to max HP. Slightly less so if there's multiple people with the debuff, but hey I cannot imagine SE having enough faith in their healer playerbase to challenge them with something like this more than once every 3 minutes. Also, if someone were set to, say, 20% HP with 50% of their max HP as Absorb/Bonded, then AST's Essential Dignity would get to pull double duty, as the first would not raise the actual HP level (hitting the Absorb/Bond first), meaning the second would also get to have high scaling (instead of currently, where one hits super hard and the second kind of noodles because the HP level changed)

TLDR This mechanic is very sensible as a way to 'counteract how strong healing is in a video game' and it's kind of baffling that SE has not made much, if any, use of it yet

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A class ability where I lose some life but gain a buff is packed with potential for this exact kind of conflict, the kind that is easily avoidable by simply not having this mechanic.

You know the game used to have this exact kind of thing, right? I don't remember it being a massive issue so much that people were at each other's throats over it though. Mostly just a case of 'oops did the silly right before a raidwide, ok I'll be shifting my timings around next time then'

[ty_taurus]

Actually, Superbolide can still do this, reducing your HP to 1. And Warrior's Berserk used to inflict Pacification after its duration that should've been Esuna'd by the healer. I think the community is more hostile now than it used to be in general, which still isn't that hostile in the grand scheme of things.

[ForsakenRoe]

Actually, Superbolide can still do this, reducing your HP to 1. And Warrior's Berserk used to inflict Pacification after its duration that should've been Esuna'd by the healer. I think the community is more hostile now than it used to be in general, which still isn't that hostile in the grand scheme of things.

And those weren't even the ones I was thinking of, I was thinking of Blood For Blood (makes you take more damage by like 5%), and Convert (aka old Manafont, cost HP to use). Superbolide, in particular, can actually kill the party if timed badly. In P12s, there is a tether that needs to be taken by the players with the correct debuff that provides immunity (idk what it's called). Right after the blobs that tether you jump at the tethered player, blowing up in a big defamation style AOE, the boss does a double half-arena slamming TB. Usual strat for this is to just invuln it, as you'd expect. But, if it's the GNB that has to take the tether on the left side, and they invuln before the blobs do their thing, the damage goes through immunity (to prevent a tank from just taking all blobs with invuln, I assume), and because Super just set them to 1 HP, the blobs oneshot the GNB, meaning the TB goes wild and likely kills the whole party.

So yeh, 'friction-generating self-destructive skill design' still exists. But it doesn't really generate friction. When someone dies to THAT mistake in particular, everyone laughs it off cos it's just funny that of all the things that ignore immunities, it's the stupid little jelly blobs

[Renathras]

But those abilities weren't popular.

Living Dead was changed because it had this issue. Super probably hasn't been just because they can't think of some other way to do "Not Hollowed Ground or Holmgang or Living Dead, but also keeps you from dying" yet. And Super does annoy people, and there are segments of the community that do complain about it and want it changed, just as the LD changes. And as you might note, that Pacification was removed from WAR's Berserk. And I'm old enough to remember when people mocked DRG for killing itself, but it was part of the whole Floor Tank meme so people largely just ran with it.

So yeah, these things have generated friction, which is why most have been removed or changed over time into forms that do not.

Lilimo's overall point is correct. Finding a few specific examples where it is not, several of which have been changed or removed from the game so they no longer do that, isn't a great rebuttal.

3-5 specific examples, more than half of which have been removed from the game outright or have had those effects removed after years of complaint, means that Lilimo is, overall, correct.

[ty_taurus]

You know, friction is kind of necessary to have a livable environment. If you removed all friction from the world, you'd not be able to go anywhere.